(Haaretz) The modest apartment in one of the side streets of Bnei Brak, where Shimon Hayut grew up, is light-years away from the private jets, racing cars and luxury hotels in which he has been spending his time in recent years. Hayut, 28, lived the hedonistic life of a millionaire. Not any old millionaire, but supposedly the wayward son of Russian-born diamond mogul Lev Leviev.

To anyone who falls into his web and is tricked by his sharp tongue, Hayut says that he left religion, and that his family showers him with money so he’ll stay away from them. That’s what he said, for example, to a contractor from Nahariya whom he met at the Etnachta club in Tel Aviv, while he was surrounded by women and ordering drinks for everyone.

Hayut even formally changed his last name to Leviev, so that his driver’s license and passport would prove his credibility, says the contractor. Like him, most of those around Hayut are unaware – until it’s too late – that the charming guy is a con man who has now fled to avoid trial in Israel, was formerly imprisoned in Finland and is wanted for fraud in several countries, including Norway and the United Kingdom.

A few weeks ago, after six months of intensive research that crossed borders and continents, the staff of the Norwegian tabloid VG located Hayut in Munich, Germany. The journalists began to take an interest in Hayut after it turned out that a young Norwegian woman fell victim to his scam and loaned him hundreds of thousands of dollars that were never returned to her.

The woman, Cecilie Schrøder Fjellhøy, approached VG and agreed to reveal her name and expose all her correspondence with Hayut, including video clips he had sent her to show his life of luxury.

The reporters soon discovered that Simon Leviev, as he calls himself, is actually an Israeli man who served a prison sentence in Finland, was extradited to Israel and tried there but disappeared before being sentenced, and turned up in various European capitals as a mysterious millionaire, accompanied by a personal assistant, secretary and bodyguard.

Fjellhøy, who flew with Hayut in his private planes and saw his lifestyle before loaning him money, told the newspaper that he seemed trustworthy, and that the fact that he was surrounded by people dispelled any doubts she had.

Hayut grew up in the predominantly ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak in central Israel and as a child studied in a Talmud Torah elementary school near his home. His father, Yohanan Hayut, is the chief rabbi of El Al.

According to the indictment filed against him in the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court, Hayut began his acts of fraud some years ago. For example, according to the charge sheet, at the age of 20 he stole checks from a family in Kiryat Ono when he babysat for their 4-year-old son. He abandoned the child in the stairwell when he heard that the child’s mother was at the police station, filing a complaint about the theft of her money.

Hayut stole other checks from the family of a businessman living in Herzliya Pituah, in whose home he worked as a handyman. He used the money to buy a Porsche and to take flying lessons in Haifa.

Although he never completed the civilian flight course, Hayut sometimes presented himself as a pilot. A classmate in the course said that he himself fell victim to a scam perpetrated by Hayut, after being persuaded by him to invest in a deal to import clothing that never came to fruition. It goes without saying that the classmate never again saw the money he invested.

Hayut fled Israel with a forged passport, and was brought back only after serving a three-year prison sentence for defrauding three women in Finland. An updated indictment was filed against him in 2017, but he was released on bail paid by his brother and a friend – and disappeared again.

Now it turns out that the scope of Hayut’s alleged acts of fraud has only multiplied over the years, and included several instances of exploiting young women who loaned him money. The reporters at VG found him in Munich thanks to a tip from a Swedish woman who fell into Hayut’s trap and cooperated with the tabloid by contacting and agreeing to meet with him. When she confronted him in a conversation recorded by the newspaper, Hayut denied that he had defrauded her.

Lev Leviev has filed a complaint with the Israel Police against Hayut, and its Tel Aviv district fraud unit confirms that Hayut is wanted for questioning. The attorney who represented him at the beginning of proceedings against him, Yaki Cohen, said that he lost contact with Hayut in recent months.

This story "Tinder Conman Defrauded By Posing As A Diamond Heir" was written by Uri Blau.

(JTA) — He’s spent eight years trying to land a spacecraft on the moon, but when Yonatan Winetraub stood on the launchpad this month at Florida’s Cape Canaveral, he was still in shock.

“I stood right next to the rocket, and it’s pretty big,” Winetraub said in a phone interview Wednesday. “In the video, you don’t see how big the rocket is and how powerful it is. But when you stand up close it’s pretty powerful.”

If Winetraub sounds like a kid marveling at the thought of space travel, that’s because he kind of is. He and two friends, all in their 30s, are on the verge of doing something extraordinary: They intend to make Israel the fourth country to land a spacecraft on the moon. Only the United States, the Soviet Union and China have done it.

Winetraub and his partners, Kfir Damari and Yariv Bash, aren’t doing it with billions of dollars from a superpower government. In 2011 they co-founded SpaceIL, an Israeli nonprofit that has a budget of $100 million — a pittance in the space biz. If their mission is successful, it would be the first time any private spacecraft landed on the moon, at lower cost and with a smaller craft than previous landings.

“Kfir, Yariv and myself sat in a bar in a suburb of Tel Aviv and thought, ‘Why not get to the moon?’” Winetraub said at a news conference Wednesday. “I always thought we’re going to get to the moon, but now it’s actually happening, and it’s quite incredible.”

SpaceIL’s squat, circular, three-legged craft is roughly the size of a compact car: 5 feet tall, 6 1/2 feet in diameter and weighing about 1,300 pounds, most of which is fuel. At 8:45 p.m. Eastern time Thursday, barring bad weather or unforeseen problems, the craft will launch into space from Florida hitched to one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rockets. Winetraub called it the “Uber of space travel.”

More like UberPool, the car pool option: Whereas Apollo 11’s 1969 trip to the moon took three days, SpaceIL’s will take about two months. That’s because it’s riding shotgun on another rocket and cannot propel itself directly to the moon. Instead it has to use orbiting to align itself, only meeting up with the moon at the beginning of April.

About four minutes after launch, the SpaceIL craft, named Beresheet — Hebrew for “Genesis” — will separate from the rocket. It will send a first communication to SpaceIL’s ground control in the central Israeli town of Yehud and go into orbit around the Earth. Over the course of about a month-and-a-half it will hurtle through space at a maximum speed of more than 22,000 miles per hour. Its thrusters will push the craft in progressively wider and wider orbits around the Earth, and closer to the moon’s orbit.

Then it will enter one of the riskiest steps of the mission.

Once it gets near the moon, the craft must suddenly slow down enough to be pulled into orbit around the moon. If it goes too fast, it will pass right by, speeding directly into space. Then, after about a week of traveling around the moon, the craft will slow down again, dropping toward its landing spot on the Sea of Serenity. About 16 feet up, it will cut the engine entirely and free-fall to the moon’s surface, making a soft landing.

SpaceIL’s founders are confident that the mission will be successful. But Winetraub acknowledged that it’s fraught.

“There are many things that can go wrong and only one thing that can go right,” he said. “You really can’t test everything. The atmosphere is different on the moon, the gravity is different on the moon, so you have to have some simulations, some educated guesses about how it’s going to work.”

There were early hiccups. At the news conference, Winetraub wanted to show an inspiring video about the history of moon landings. Except the sound wouldn’t work. Then the sound came on, but the screen went blue.

“Can we have the sound?” Winetraub asked, chuckling. “The sound is more difficult than getting to the moon. We’ll give it one more try.”

To even reach this point was an unlikely journey for SpaceIL, whose story is a quintessential Israeli startup tale. It was founded to compete in Google’s Lunar XPrize, a contest to see who could build the first private spacecraft to reach the moon. The co-founders submitted their application right at the deadline, Dec. 31, 2010, and went through a few failed experiments before building the right craft.

The first model was the size of a Coke bottle. When that didn’t work, the team made the craft the size of a dishwasher. Now they’re up to a car.

“It is rocket science,” Winetraub said, explaining the difficulty. “If it doesn’t work the first time, that’s OK, but the second time around you expect it to work, so that was hard. We did it again and the design you now see on the launchpad is the third or fourth iteration.”

The XPrize shut down without a winner last year, but along the way SpaceIL received enough funding to keep going. It’s working in partnership with Israel Aerospace Industries, and its donors include the U.S. billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, South African-Israeli billionaire Morris Kahn and Canadian-Israeli real estate mogul Sylvan Adams.

The mission has also become a kind of cause celebre. Buzz Aldrin, who knows something about getting to the moon, tweeted his best wishes Wednesday. His Apollo 11 mission landed on the lunar surface nearly 50 years ago.

“If the #SpaceIL mission is successful this Thursday, Israel will become the fourth country to land an aircraft on the moon,” he wrote. “Good luck, Beresheet!”

The spacecraft will raise an Israeli flag once it reaches the moon. It will carry a time capsule with the entire Bible printed in microscopic text on a coin, along with hundreds of other documents compressed onto small discs: dictionaries, encyclopedias, and Jewish and Israeli texts like the Israeli national anthem and the traditional Jewish prayer for travelers.

The mission also will include scientific research. In partnership with NASA and The Weizmann Institute, an Israeli university, the craft will test the moon’s magnetic field in addition to taking photos and video. After two days the craft will be shut off and the mission will be complete.

But SpaceIL doesn’t think its work will end there. The organization also hopes to inspire Israeli kids to go into science and engineering by showing them that space exploration is achievable. Its educational programs have already reached a million children, whom SpaceIL engages by asking them to help solve certain problems the craft might face, like how to stabilize with fuel sloshing around inside. The craft’s time capsule also will include drawings from Israeli kids.

And SpaceIL is hoping to engage the Israeli public in the mission. There is even a Spotify playlist of Israeli songs appropriate for the launch featuring “Space Shuttles” by the Israeli singer Berry Sakharof.

“It’s the first Israeli spacecraft, but hopefully not the last,” Damari, another co-founder, said at the news conference.

When kids ask him if the craft will return, he says, “We tell them no, it stays there with the time capsule and all sorts of interesting things inside. It’s your job to reach the moon and bring it back.”

This story "Israel Aims To Send A Rocket To The Moon Thursday Night" was written by Ben Sales.

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(JTA) — Jussie Smollett was charged with a felony for making a false police report in which the “Empire” actor said he was the victim of a hate attack last month in Chicago.

Smollett, who is black, Jewish and gay, was charged Wednesday with felony disorder conduct, which carries a prison sentence of up to three years and could require him to repay police for the cost of the investigation. That could run to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Smollett was taken into police custody on Thursday morning in Chicago.

Fox Entertainment has said it is not cutting Smollett’s openly gay character, Jamal Lyon, on “Empire.” Deadline Hollywood reported Wednesday, however, that there are rumors the character’s scenes have been trimmed or cut in the episodes being filmed and the network is considering suspending Smollett from the show or putting him on some form of leave.

Police believe Smollett paid two Nigerian brothers to stage the Jan. 29 attack in downtown Chicago. The brothers, one who appears in “Empire,” testified Wednesday before a grand jury.

Smollett has denied involvement in the assault in which he told police that two men “gained his attention by yelling out racial and homophobic slurs towards him” before attacking, pouring an “unknown chemical substance” on him and wrapping a rope around his neck. They said “This is MAGA country” as they fled, he also told police.

This story "Jussie Smollett Arrested, Faces Felony For False Report" was written by Marcy Oster.

William Happer, an official on the National Security Council, will likely head up a proposed committee to explore whether or not climate change is a national security threat, The Washington Post reports.

Happer is an atomic physicist who founded the CO2 Coalition, a group he calls, “The CO2 anti-defamation league,” explaining, “There is the CO2 molecule, and it has undergone decade after decade of abuse, for no reason.” His group seeks to combat restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions.

That 2016 comment isn’t the first time Happer has likened the plight of the molecule to the plight of the Jewish people, CNN notes. In 2014, speaking to CNBC, Happer said, “The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler. Carbon dioxide is actually a benefit to the world, and so were the Jews.”

According to the Post, the Presidential Committee on Climate Security, which Happer is set to lead, may be established through an executive order.

It’s odd for a public official to compare human mass murder to the feelings of a single carbon atom covalently bonded to two oxygen atoms. The Holocaust has more in common with climate change than with CO2 — both have been labeled hoaxes, and both become more deadly the longer they’re ignored.

Jenny Singer is the deputy life/features editor for the Forward. You can reach her at Singer@forward.com or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

This story "Likely WH Climate Advisor Compared C02 To The Holocaust" was written by Jenny Singer.

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How should the media report hate crimes and alleged hate crimes? How should media report alleged hate crimes that are now suspected hoaxes? And lastly, most dizzyingly, how should media report alleged hate crimes that are now suspected hoaxes when the hoax may, itself, be a hoax?

In late January, “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett, who is black and gay, with Jewish heritage, was hospitalized after being attacked by two men who first shouted racial slurs, then beat him physically, poured a chemical substance on his face, and placed a noose around his neck, Chicago Police reported.

Smollett told police that his attackers shouted, “This is MAGA country,” in reference to the President’s slogan.

The attack, the police wrote, was to be treated as “a possible hate crime.”

Now some sources have claimed that the attack was a hoax orchestrated by Smollett himself. On February 13, Vox reports, police arrested two brothers, who were being treated as “persons of interest.” It became clear that the two brothers knew Smollett professionally, and both were released, with the Chicago Police Department saying that new findings had “shifted the trajectory of the investigation.”

Multiple publications quoted unnamed sources who said that Smollett staged the attack, though on February 14 Chicago Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi tweeted that the hoax reports are “unconfirmed.” He added that reporting by ABC7Chicago, which claimed to use Chicago police as sources, was “uninformed and inaccurate.”

On the 17th, Guglielmi tweeted that detectives for the Chicago PD will interview Smollett again, writing, “While we are not in a position to confirm, deny or comment on the validity of what’s been unofficially released, there are some developments in this investigation and detectives have some follow-ups to complete which include speaking to the individual who reported the incident.”

The alleged attack has triggered an avalanche of responses as details have been released. One consistent factor has been pushback on social media against the reporting of the story.

Though responses to coverage have been consistently critical, the criticism itself has shifted on its axis. Initially, critics expressed disgust over reporting of an “alleged” attack and a “possible” hate crime. Later, critics berated media for reporting the alleged attack at all.

The criticism, which comes primarily from the left, that journalists and media groups should not hesitate to label clearly racist events, for example, as “racist” instead of “racially charged,” has become common. Criticism primarily from the right, that media is fixated on victims and addicted to stories about identity politics, is also nothing new.

But there’s no winning in the Smollett case anyway. It ends either with the vindication of a man who was brutally attacked and belittled, or the revelation that he lied will cast suspicion on anyone who comes forward as a victim of a hate crime.

Jenny Singer is the deputy life/features editor for the Forward. You can reach her at Singer@forward.com or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

This story "Jussie Smollett Case Has Both Sides Crying Media Bias" was written by Jenny Singer.